A personal fight against the modern laptop
hackaday.com
hackaday.com
Also, I didn't agree with the comment about no one being able to but a keyboard on an iPad Pro like device. I don't own one, but I know people who love their Surface 4s. That said, the Apple keyboard for the iPad Pro is sort of OK.
Disagree? Just try to run Solidworks with a track pad on a laptop for a view into just how bad this interface element really is.
Why are they still around? Because it is the easy an laziest approach to a no maintenance (no moving parts) low cost device to put into laptops to move the pointer around.
Nobody is interested in innovating because people tolerate the things and they are cheap. Move on, focus on pitching more pixels or touch bars. Nothing to see here.
Nearly 15 years ago I went through a period of intense work that led to an extremely painful carpal tunnel condition. It didn't get to the point of requiring surgery (I knew people who got there) but it was debilitating and it made work nearly impossible.
My solution was to take the bull by the horns. I designed and fabricated my own desk to address the ergonomic problems of standard desks. I also switched to a thumb operated trackball. Within about three months the soreness was gone, the inflammation receded and using the computer ceased to be a painful experience. I have not had carpal tunnel issues for fifteen years. Notable, when you consider I typically put in twelve hour days in front of the computer.
The very first thing I do with a laptop is disable the touch-pad and install a thumb operated trackball. Touch-pads are worthless as far as I am concerned. They might even be dangerous in terms of repetitive motion injuries due to the way they work.
Similar issues appear when using other applications, such as 2D drafting or electrical engineering design programs.
Getting away from that class of software, even using Excel is a pain. A mouse or trackball have what I am going to call a "static" relationship with the pointer. If I life my hand I can go back and touch the mouse or trackball and organically move the pointer. When you do the same with a track-pad you lose your reference point completely.
At home we have a Logitech keyboard with a track-pad to run the PC connected to our home theater system. I can't describe how cumbersome this feels when compared to connecting a trackball to the same rig. I've run the test with multiple visitors. I give them a lap desk and the keyboard. It's uncomfortable. I then connect a wireless thumb-operated trackball. Night and day. Not one person wants to go back to the track-pad once they experience this.
It's a bad interface. It also happens to be cheap and probably OK for people who just want hang out on Facebook and do menial tasks on the computer.
My take is computer designers have gotten lazy. Nobody wants to innovate when it comes to the hard stuff. Apple used to have physical trackballs on their laptops. Innovating past the track-pad requires someone to have the balls to say "Hey market, try this idea" and be willing to have it flop. That's why it isn't happening, track-pad are crap, but they are safe from a consumer acceptance perspective.